The chatter had started.

The talk was of the weekend.

"You be careful down at Archie's. All he gets people down there for is two days of mucking out his bloody stables. It's slave labour. First thing you'll be given is a pitchfork, all the exercise you'll get is carting manure…" "Sybil and I are going to Budapest. No, just for the weekend, out tonight, back at sparrow-fart on Monday morning. She says we'll get all the Christmas presents there for half of what Regent Street'd cost…" "Yes, with Roddy, somewhere in Northants. It's his sister's twenty-first. I had to buy a new dress, four hundred bloody pounds. Some D.J. oick from the Beeb's doing the disco…" "No, really, we're camping. Fiona's into that sort of thing. Exmoor in November, Christ! I said I'd be sleeping in longjohns with the sleeping bag tied at my neck. She's a tough little vixen.. ."

Bren was going nowhere for the weekend. He was going nowhere because he had not been invited anywhere.

He was at the door. No one seemed to have noticed that he was leaving. Bren stood aside to make way for his Section Head.

"Just off then, Bren?"

Well, he was at the door with his raincoat on and his briefcase in his hand… "Just off, Mr Wilkins."

"You didn't call me."

"Nothing came through that was Priority."

"Thank the good Lord for that."

"I checked through the statistics, sir. It's the first week in the last ten that we haven't had either a shooting or a bombing, or even a failure.

Good morning, then, Mr Wilkins."

He looked back at his desk, to be certain that it was cleared, that all the sheets of paper that he had headed DONNELLY JJ had gone to the shredder. There would have been a small frown from Mr Wilkins if he had left any vestige of his night's work on the desk.